Legend [YEONBIN] ✓

twenty-five ; soobin

I started bringing a change of clothes every day. As predicted, the favored attack of the kids was food. Icould make a whole Chuseok meal with the ingredients I’d been plastered with.

i was lucky mom was still away. It gave me privacy to stew in my humiliation.

I walked toward class after gym. It had been a particularly harrowing hour of avoiding flying objects that “accidentally” slipped out of kids’ hands. Which wouldn’t have been such a problem if my balance wasn’t constantly thrown off by the ghosts that plagued me. It was almost like they’d coordinated with my human bullies to bombard me all at once.

And I couldn’t forget Sunghoon’s words. The ghosts weren’t new. They’d been following me like flags of shame ever since I stole their lives to prolong my own. They were my punishment.

The late bell rang, letting me know that the extra-long shower I’d taken to avoid the other kids after gym class had been a mistake.

I was hurrying down the hall when an arm shot out, blocking my path. I glanced up at Jung Jaegil. I could make out a fading bruise over his right eye and remembered his anxious face as he searched the dark, dirty road for his father. Guilt pricked along my skin.

“Get out of my way,” I said, adding steel to my voice. “I’m late.”

“We’re all late.” Jaegil gestured to himself and Seho, who stood behind him.

“I don’t have time for this.” I tried to walk around Jaegil, but his friend blocked my path.

“I heard you’ve got a record,” Jaegil said with a laugh. “I never thought there’d be a kid worse than me in this school.”

I tried to push past him again, but he slammed me back so hard my shoulders hit the wall with a thud.

It’s what you deserve after what you did to his father, a ghostly voice whispered. And I didn’t know if it was one of my phantoms or my own thoughts.

“Something about you bothers me,” Jaegil drawled out. He pushed forward. I smelled orange juice and shrimp chips on his breath. “How did you break that store window?”

“I told you to get out of my way,” I warned. I could feel my control breaking.

“What do you think you can do to make me?” Jaegil ran a finger down my cheek.

I slapped it away.

Jaegil’s eyes flashed, a rage I could recognize. The look of someone who’d been battered by life. And I wondered if Jaegil was more a kindred spirit than I wanted to admit. After all, we had both given in to our violent natures. Jaegil lifted his hand. A windup before the strike.

Then his body flew away from me, sliding across the tile floor.

Beomgyu stood between us like a shield protecting me from the dazed bully on the floor.

“Ya, Choi Beomgyy. Nappeun gijibae!” Jaegil yelled as Seho rushed to his side. A door down the hall opened, and a second-year teacher poked his head out.

“What are you kids doing out of class? Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

Jaegil and Seho took off, well-practiced in the art of escape.

Beomgyu and me were not as lucky.

•    •    •

The disciplinary conference room was a stark square space with white walls and half a dozen desks. The teacher sat us back to back with sheets of paper to write apology letters.